Original post: aus.social (Mastodon)
this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2025
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Microblog Memes
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A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.
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Where did this extremely dumb habit come from where people refer to anyone online as “chat”?
This wasn’t a thing a couple of years ago. Is this just internet brain rot taking over?
Its from watching streamers I imagine.
Chat is a bunch of idiots that's all I know
i mean, "habit" is a weird word for it. i'd call it more of a trend. "brain rot" seems like an adequate description.
it comes from streamer culture where streamers would refer to their audience as "chat" because the chat box is the main way for viewers to interact with whoever they are watching.
I guess memes are brain rot. This feels like a get off my lawn comment.
Just because it’s a relatively new meme/saying that derives from streamer culture, doesn’t make it brain rot.
It's also the most unbiased word for referring to a group in a gender neutral way I've seen lol most others have implications of status (gentlepersons, folks), are still technically gendered (guys, not to mention this implies relatively young people too), or overbroad (everybody is well, everybody. Chat implies you're addressing your community or a small group since they're the ones who would be talking to you).
Folks or yall though. "That's all y'all" is delightful to say
Wait "folks" has a status implication? IS NO WORD SIMPLY UNPROBLEMATIC!? IS NOTHING SACRED FROM THIS LINGUISTIC HELL
the way i see it, "folks" can refer to a more traditional group of people, most likely rural, and you wouldn't call nobles or people of other high status "folks".
but also i doubt people think it is problematic; it's just a quirk of the English language that "chat" emerged basically out of nowhere with the closest analogue being "audience".
But you'd call nobles or high status people "chat"?
i'd call them "pricks" but you do you
I meant more that chat implies it could be literally anyone because it's anonymous. Like when the game's developer or some guy with 100k followers suddenly drops in to a little guy's stream. You wouldn't know unless they announced themselves lol
Brainrot is commonly used as just a general term to refer to later genz or gen alpha humor I think
It's the sort of thing that every generation does to make their sense of humor sound unique and new
It's how twitch streamers collectively address their viewers. It's basically just announcing you're going to have a soapbox moment
More bullshit lingo to learn and use, to prove you're with it. It never ends, but sometimes it circles back around and rhymes.
I used to be with it...